New plot details surface as Ghostbusters reboot enters production

The Ghostbusters reboot starts shooting this week in Boston. Out of budgetary concern - producers are aiming to get the movie in under $150 million - the city will stand in for New York City on the big screen. And seeing as the main bulk of principal photography will take place on its streets, The Boston Herald caught wind of some key plot details on the female-led reboot. Beware, they’re a bit spoilery.

“[Kristen] Wiig and [Melissa] McCarthy play a pair of unheralded authors who write a book positing that ghosts are real. Flash forward a few years and Wiig lands a prestigious teaching position at Columbia U. Which is pretty sweet, until her book resurfaces and she is laughed out of academia.

Wiig reunites with McCarthy and the other two proton pack-packing phantom wranglers, and she gets some sweet revenge when ghosts invade Manhattan and she and her team have to save the world.”

The rest of that team includes Saturday Night Live alums Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones who round out the main quartet. A deskbound Chris Hemsworth will channel his inner Janine Melnitz as their receptionist.

One of the first names linked to a headlining Ghostbuster role was Emma Stone, and now the actress has spoken out on why she didn’t join the ensemble. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Stone reveals that she was in fact offered a part but chose to turn it down after her experiences on The Amazing Spider-Man 2. “The script was really funny. It just didn't feel like the right time for me. A franchise is a big commitment - it's a whole thing. I think maybe I need a minute before I dive back into that water."

While it would have been a treat to see Stone strap on the proton pack, especially with Bill Murray singing her praises, this next interview snippet might cheer you up. Another one of the original Ghostbusters Dan Aykroyd, has been dropping hints about the film, telling Comic Book Resources that it will refer “to the to the first two in a really neat, classy way.”

“The new one's going to be big,” he adds. “The interplay, and with each of them, their individual voices are so well defined. They're just such different characters, and there's a friction. There's a dynamic there. I'm not going to spoil it for people, but it's going to be big, big!. This is all going to introduce [the franchise] to a whole new generation of girls that are going to want to be Ghostbusters. We always needed them.”

Excited yet?

Paul Feig directs Ghostbusters based on a script he co-wrote with The Heat scribe Katie Dippold. The film opens in the US on July 22, 2016 with no confirmed UK release date.